As most of you readers know, I’ve been struggling with a spectrum of eating disorders since an early age. I exhibited signs and symptoms of behavior from around 6, and actively began restricting knowing full-well what I was doing at age 11.

I’ve been in and out of treatment centers, inpatient, and have seen so many therapists and psychiatrists it’s a wonder I even think there’s hope for me at all. Especially on top of my many other ailments (both mental and physical).

Last September I started seeing an eating disorder therapist. In December she referred me to a psychiatrist. This has been my care team.

Today was the first time Matt came with me to a therapy appointment. I’m desperately trying to remember everything that I said.

For those of you who may not be aware, eating disorders are at least 95% lying and keeping secrets, avoiding the truth, over-justification, and investment in our own secret “safe” world inside our eating disorders. Some of us are more enmeshed in our secret eating disorder worlds than others. It’s to the point, after decades, that I literally do not know what’s my personality coming out or if it’s my eating disorder talking. About almost anything? I can make any life situation about how fat I am etc. And I always could! Not just since I’ve gained all this weight. All this fucking weight. How did I gain so much weight? “RECOVERY?!” You fat fucking joke.

I’m getting off track.

Today I spilled some secrets. Just last time I admitted to a friend that I’m not ready to give up my disorder. I don’t want to recover. I want to lose weight. Now that my eating disorder has swung from undereating and purging to overeating and purging it seems so hopeless.

My therapist tries to assure me that it’s a common swing, and actually confided in me that this means I never actually recovered when I thought I did. The disordered thoughts and thought patterns along with behaviors and mindsets followed me all this time and manifested itself differently over the years. So that’s real comforting, as you can imagine.

So what secrets did I spill? Big ones. My secret dinners. That when I joke around about food or “I went to the gym last week I deserve a treat” seemingly off-the-cuff jokes are really just me being good at making things normal and ok in appearance for what I think are others’ benefit.

I’ve talked about that wanting things to be normal before, too. In another post I qualified it with “I don’t want to be a drama queen” around friends, and I want to be seen as normal. Not broken. But…. I think I knew which side is showing its prevalence recently. Stupid fucking fatass piece of garbage.

Oops lost my train of thought.

I don’t want to let go of my secrets. Because once I start undereating full time again (restriction is easy until I feel pressured (mostly by my own self) to act normal or fun about food) then I’ll desperately need these secrets back.

They’re usually the cliche “I already ate” or “I don’t feel well” or “I didn’t even go to the gym today I can’t have toast” you get the gist.

Eating disorders are fucking impossible and I feel horrible. The worst part? “You don’t have an eating disorder. You’re just weak.” Not just from my own brain, but this happens in others’ minds as well. I know it does, because I read it online when I see mentions of Binge-Eating Disorder.

I think now I’m just ranting? I feel so lost. If eating disorders are part of my personality then I’m almost okay with it staying. I like to think I’m pretty down to earth and easy to hang out with. I’m empathetic and my-own-brand-of fun. I’m hardcore but nice? I don’t know I don’t know. Just like the anger. That’s me too.

My therapist called me defensive and I said “NO I’M NOT” as a joke, but…

This medicine has me at the worst I’ve been since I was in and out of the hospital 8 ish years ago. I have my fingers crossed that the new mood stabilizer works with it so I stop going down these depressive spirals. It’s a shame that anti-psychotics literally do nothing but make me physically miserable, because they show promise in a lot of people with persistent depression/bipolar etc.

The antidepressant I’m on is a newer drug, and when I asked my therapist about it she said she’s heard nothing but good things. I’ve been on it since December? January? And I think I’ve cut more in that time that I have in the previous 5 years of my life. It’s not good. It’s not good at all.

I’m not always aware that there are other options. It does feel like all my other coping mechanisms leave me at the last minute. It’s not like I haven’t tried “working on it” or whatever. These last however-many months have been really difficult again.

Overall I feel really normal. Almost hopeful? But I’m just so easily “triggered” now. I use that word as a descriptor only, because I don’t mean it like in the “safe space” sense, but rather certain things someone says or if I get an intruder (subconscious memory or thought process that weasels itself into your conscious, and is usually caused by having repressed a lot of stuff) then a flip switches and I’m gone for a while.

Which of course leads into the next morning/day/hour that “oops I got pathetic again” and that is not a very good feeling. I don’t like feeling whiny, or like people should be wary of my feelings. That’s not the case. I used to be able to reflect on stuff when I wanted to, but overall I was pretty stable. Now it’s this crazy 50/50 chance every day that I’ll ride the slippery slope down to depressionville on a whim.

Everything is frustrating. I’m starting a new medication (another new medication) tomorrow morning, and hopefully that’ll give me the mood boost I need to get back to the old Shley, but a slightly less depressed version. That’s my hope. It’s difficult to function when you casually hate yourself.

So everyone knows that I work out regularly enough, and that there are a lot of roadblocks that annoy me and stop me from going more often and being more active.

What I talk about primarily is my foot/ankle/hip problems. Y’all get it; that stuff sucks. But I’m medicated and it’s manageable now as long as I take my pills and do my stretches. I just can’t go overboard. I’ve increased the ROM by 15% 🙂

What I want to complain about now is the rut I’m in. Call it depression, or laziness, or working 2 jobs and going to school full time, or whatever. But it’s so difficult to convince myself to go to the gym. I don’t mind working out at home. I have like a bajillion dumbbells and those ball things. I have exercise mats and a jump rope and resistance bands and some other stuff.

But all I can really manage to do at the gym is cardio. I can’t even blame the meatheads, because I don’t care about them and making fun of them in my head gives me strength. So it’s possible that I can do my strength training primarily at home and my cardio primarily at the gym… It’s just difficult to plan/manage. When I get home all I want to do is consume substances that make me forget I’m alive with responsibilities.

Also I hate being such a scaredy cat because there’s a huge, PERFECTLY good trail RIGHT DOWN THE STREET that I never use because people are horrible and terrifying. I have a bike, I like to run, i could even walk, but NO. Fear runs my life because everything is terrible and bad things can happen to anyone and I have a cat to take care of.

So I depend on the gym. It’s scary in its own way. People look at you in the gym. Some will try to convince me that everyone is busy doing their own thing, but that’s not always true.

Since I’ve gotten fat again I only have sweatpants and a few tshirts/hoodies that I can wear because all my cute workout stuff is too small. So I’m the frumpy nobody who looks like I’ve never been to a gym before. Not to mention once I’ve started actually working out. Then my hair is stupid and my face is stupid and people i know go to the gym!

I don’t want people i know there!

Last time i was able to drop 30 pounds (my weight has fluctuated a lot in 15 years which is about normal, i think) we had a treadmill in our basement, which was 20 feet away from my bed. EZPZ. Then running outside was fun, because at that point i lived in a more-flat neighborhood.

This post is just me whining about how ‘hard’ it is for me to go do exercises i enjoy doing.

Also the tennis courts by our house are always taken over, and when we wait there patiently they dont’ seem to care and just keep on tennis-ing forever until we decide to leave. Plus i can only get like 2 people to play tennis with me.

This isn’t a real blog post. I just didn’t have enough room on Twitter.

Edit: It turned into a blog.

What I wanted to say was:

I always thought it was hilarious growing up how therapists, school counselors, family friends and even some family would tell me that when my parents fought (pretty much everyone knew. They weren’t subtle) that they weren’t fighting over me.

Maybe for a lot of people this is the case: parents usually fight because they take issue with each other.

Growing up in my family dynamics the fighting was almost always because of me. All 4 of my parents fought with all the other parents. The only pair that didn’t fight was my dad and stepmom. Everyone else fought with everyone else. Screaming matches that would end up in someone slamming down a phone or pacing back and forth muttering. Etc.

My own home experiences were slammed doors, objects thrown, awful curses exchanged, sobbing, someone leaving and not knowing exactly where they were going or for how long or to do what….

But so often it was me. I did something wrong and got disciplined in a way that didn’t please everyone. I accidentally gossiped about another parent about something that wasn’t ok to a different parent. Who got custody over me and when. Treatment of me and my weird issues from an early age.

Even with home life one parent was far more strict than the other and one parent far more lenient and protective. That caused almost as many fights as custody and stepparent rifts.

Everyone fought with everyone and it was always my fault. I knew it was my fault. Fighting started after I said something or did something. Wrong or otherwise. So when these well-meaning adults would say “They’re not fighting because of you” I basically just learned early on that people lie trying to make you feel better and nothing is ever ok 🙂 Also: don’t trust.